Re: A few to make you laugh

[Bob La Londe <none@none.com99>]

As some of you may know at one point in my life I was considering law
enforcement.  I did graduate from a "mini" academy (didn't actually
qualify me to be a cop), and followed up one summer by doing
ride-a-longs with a local highway patrol officer.  We will call him Joe.
  (not his name).

The first time we got together I saw him make a couple minor stops (no
tickets).  I got to read some police reports at the station and we
chatted a lot.  At one point nothing much was happening so we went to
check on the mile marker just east of Dateland.  Joe thought it was
pretty funny that people kept stealing that mile marker.  Just west of
Dateland is mile marker 68.  You figure it out.

One day we were sitting in the patrol car at Dateland and somebody
rolled the stop sign at the bottom of the off ramp.  We lit him up and
pulled him over.  I left the windows down in the patrol car and sat back
to watch.  Before Joe had even gotten up to the window of the car I
could hear the driver protesting loudly, "Come on officer.  I slowed
down.  I looked both ways.  It was safe."

Joe calmly told him, "Its a stop sign.  Not a slow down sign.  Besides
if you looked both ways you should have seen the patrol car.  Why would
you roll a stop sign right in front of a cop."

Whining the man just repeated himself louder and louder in different
ways.  "There was no danger.  I slowed down.  I looked."

Louder and more firmly Joe interrupted the guy to tell him."  Its still
a stop sign.  Not a slow down sign."  "The law say stop at stop signs,
not look both ways and roll through."

Back and forth they went until they were both yelling.  I could see the
back of Joe's neck starting to turn red.  Finally he had enough.  He
reach in the window of the car, and dragged the guy half way out through
the open window with one hand while smacking the guy back and forth
across the face with his other.  Hard.  I could hear the slaps over the
sound of the guy screaming "STOP!  STOP!  STOP!  PLEASE STOP."

Joe yelled back at him. "Do you mean stop or slow down!"